As a girl, and later a woman, prone to barbs and punchy elocutions, I have encountered a great many repercussions for my words. My re-education began in primary school when the mother of a classmate angrily rang my mum to tell her that I had said this or that outrageous thing to her daughter. (A daughter who was herself tough as nails and a crafty little madame; I never picked on those weaker than me.)
Over time, the pain of fallouts with school friends became the stress of getting communication wrong in the workplace, which carries its own, more formal and sinister consequences. Now I try to pause and be polite and ‘reasonable’ (one must be ‘reasonable’!) no matter how angry, anxious or upset I feel in the face of blatant foul play, falsity or injustice. I even try to compromise – blergh – when encouraged to do so.
This, I have been assured by people and professionals I trust, is the path to a good life. But could the advice I have taken to heart – that it’s stronger and safer to be calm, polite, and open to compromise – be out of date? I fear so. Indeed, all the signs point to the worrying possibility that the power of the meek has been chucked to the kerb and that it’s the rude who will inherit the Earth.
Take Donald Trump’s exchanges with the outgoing Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, in which he threatened things that a more self-conscious person would have known were completely insane. Even if one thought they were a good idea, most people probably wouldn’t have mentioned them out of fear of seeming like a mad monster. Namely, to thrust on Canada (among other traditional trading partners) hefty tariffs, making America’s neighbours decidedly poorer.
The first phone call with Trump evidently left Trudeau quaking; in the second, he just gave in to the President, buying himself a ten-day reprieve on the tariffs. It was a spectacle of the two styles duking it out: the polite, norms-respecting, reasonable-seeming one, Trudeau (who is also pretty mad below the glossy presentation) against the more obviously monstrous Trump.
But because Trump’s hubris knows no bounds, he has seen fast and surprising results. We have seen this too with Venezuela over returning its migrants, Mexico and the border, and China agreeing to the partial sale of TikTok to an American sovereign wealth fund.
Because Trump’s hubris knows no bounds, he has seen fast and surprising results
Other hardballers getting their way by being wildly arrogant include man-child Elon Musk, who has just hired a bunch of twentysomethings to wipe out USAID; Piers Morgan, whose rocket-fuelled success and influence revolve quite heavily around his take-no-prisoners bombast; and Gary Lineker, whose inappropriate anti-Israel rhetoric hasn’t stopped him having a monopoly on some of the world’s biggest podcasts through his company Goalhanger Podcasts. I might even nominate Prince Harry for this category, given the way he screeched and raged at the poor old Palace as he slammed out of Britain with the spoiled and moany Meghan. Instead of backfiring, his unbridled and impolitic fury has been wondrous for his bank balance. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, with his flagrant money-wasting on woke nonsense in place of clamping down on London’s out-of-control crime rates, is certainly a candidate. Has the man no shame? Of course not. Shame is out. Eerie levels of conviction and wily manipulativeness are in.
I’ve always scratched my head over the confidence required for playing hardball, as well as the luck. What’s to stop the other person just laughing and saying, in the most condescending formal language, ‘Desist, sir’? Sometimes hardball is genius, and with a fair end in sight. But in this particular age of hardball, the outcome seems to be determined by who is willing to be the bigger chump, to brazen it out, and to never, ever seem actually human. There are relatively few female arseholes on the world stage. Perhaps, like me, other would-be lady chumps-in-chief have been schooled too firmly in the wrongness of being a bull in a china shop.
Women are generally more self-conscious than men; the average woman spends around 55 minutes a day on her appearance, while a sixth of women wear make-up at the gym. Women are also more aware of the reactions they elicit. Such self-consciousness is not compatible with outrageous behaviour on the scale now stalking the corridors of power. Indeed, the major drawback to being an arsehole is that others will see you as an arsehole and hate you. But then again, if you’re an arsehole, you just don’t care. And that’s, as it were, your trump card.
Comments